In recent years, significant advances have been made in the design of track measuring and gauging equipment for determining the condition of railroad tracks. Accurate optical gauging units employing laser technology have been developed which can be mounted upon a railroad car and propelled along the track to be inspected. These systems operate to accurately sense track defects, variations in track profile and other track irregularities which might result in a dangerous condition.
Systems have been developed to take crosslevel measurements across the rails of a track to detect relative level differences which might result in rocking and the ultimate derailment of a railroad car. A prior crosslevel measurement system is shown by Patton U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,854.
Even with the technological developments which have been made in track gauging methods and systems, the need still exists for a compact, portable apparatus which can be manually employed to obtain accurate crosslevel, warp and crosslevel index values for a length of railroad track.